Sitting on Babies: Sitting Down with Becky Whittemore

When comedians Becky Whittemore and Brooke Jacob teamed up to make Sitting On Babies, they focused on two topics that they had first hand experience of: providing childcare in New York City and being featured on reality television. In fact, Becky's reality tv story is so amazing that an episode of Spike TV's show "Ink Master" was named after her experience. I want to share this story, as told to me by the incredibly endearing Becky, and then we'll get to the webseries (pinky swear).

So a friend of Becky's asks if she wants to get a free tattoo for this tattoo competition show, Ink Master. Since Becky has been thinking about tattoos anyways, plus this is a FREE tattoo from a real professional (I mean, the show is called Ink Master), it seems like a no-brainer.

Becky Whittemore

Fast-forward to the show's taping. Becky is asked to choose between three styles: Tribal, american traditional or pin-up. She goes pin-up. There's a speed element, so Becky doesn't have much time to hem and haw over what she wants with the tattoo artist. Being from Georgia, she goes with a pretty lady sitting next to a big peach. The artist draws up a sketch, and Becky asks for fuller hair on the tattoo. And one more thing- can she be barefoot instead of wearing heels?

The tattoo comes along quickly and somethings looks a little off to Becky, but heck, it's a free tattoo! A week later, Becky realizes why it looks so funny. Can you see it?

You're right, the peach looks a little (a lot) like a butt (err, sorry Becky!) but that's not it. Okay, try now:

That's right. A week after getting her tattoo she realizes that her pin-up has two right feet. The title of the episode featuring Becky's tattoo? "Permanent Mistakes".

"When you're on the set you realize how completely fake all these shows are. The scenes are edited together out of order, and they might have you answer questions on air and then splice it with other footage to make it seem like you're talking to the host. We wanted our series to show that absurdity," Says Becky.

Okay- that was a tangential but fun way of getting to the show, Sitting on Babies:



For those of you who are unable to just watch the above clip (maybe you're at work, it's cool, no judgement) this is a show about two New York City nannies, in a style that perfectly mimics the worst of all those damn TLC shows that we love to hate (props to director Tim Young and the rest of their talented crew).

"I'm a comedian but Brooke is a for-real legit actress. We met at an Upright Citizens Brigade improv class and knew we wanted to work together," says Becky. "We decided to make the show loosely based on our lives. We write about real life stories but not entirely directly, since we don't want to freak anyone out and we still need to get paid."

Brooke Jacob

On comedy site Funny or Die their three episodes have collectively been viewed about 25,000 times so far, which is pretty damn impressive (and that doesn't even include people like you who may have just watched it on YouTube).
You can subscribe to their YouTube channel for new episodes.

Becky was ridiculously nice and it's cool to see how she and Brooke have turned an idea into such a well-made show. You can't help but root for them as they keep making awesome happen.